


Blood and Ebony

by Sera_dy_Relandrant



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Kinder- und Hausmärchen | Grimm's Fairy Tales, Schneewittchen | Snow White (Fairy Tale), Snow White - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 00:35:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4766906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sera_dy_Relandrant/pseuds/Sera_dy_Relandrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My stepmother was beautiful, the fairest in the land. My father was wise and good and brave - or so they claimed. My suitors were handsome princes, pure of heart and noble. And I? I was a half-breed, an abomination. A re-telling of Snow White.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood and Ebony

_Three drops of blood fell into the snow. The red on the white looked so beautiful that she thought to herself, "If only I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood in this frame."_

**\- Snow White**

* * *

She was one of _those_ women. Tapered white fingers that could not bear the strain of more than tapping out a gentle harmony on the pianoforte or flicking listlessly through a yellow-backed novel. Smooth cuticles and soft palms from a thousand-and-one nights of sleeping in chickenskin gloves. Eyes so wide and blue and simpleminded they would not have looked out of place on a china doll, eyelashes made for batting at men.

And that voice of course, that simpering little voice that needled its way under your skin. "I seem to be a man's woman. I never _can_ understand why all the other women hate me so."

She was all this and more. My lady stepmother. My queen.

She was calling me now, an imperious little rat-tat-tat on the armrest with the blade of her fan. I lingered a moment longer in the shadow of the velvet portieres, long enough to let her draw a martyrlike sigh and inform our guests that I did not mean to be a wicked child, that I was only shy.

I was _not_ shy.

I skulked out from my hiding place, pastry-colored skirts expanding before me as though I were trapped in a meringue. Like all the other women in the room, I had been draped in suitably springlike colors. We looked like a box of gaily-colored macaroons, plump and soft and puddingy, ready to be licked and tasted and eaten. Some of them were plain, some of them pretty. Only my stepmother and I stood out. Anwen for her beauty and I... well I for my ugliness.

"Eira," my stepmother said, patting the spot on the couch right next to her. "Sit, child."

I had a dancing master, an etiquette master and a governess but none of them had managed to instill even the slightest fragments of grace in me. They were poor teachers, agreed, but I was a worse student. I would not be taught. So I sagged into my seat, plumped the fat cushions at my back instead of sitting ramrod seat as Anwen would have preferred (she looked like she had an iron rod thrust up her... well never mind, she was a lady and ladies didn't have arses. Or cunnies or tits or any interesting bits). And then I glared at our guests.

"You remember your cousins," Anwen said, smiling, very agreeable, pretending as though I wasn't an itch under her skin that she longed to scratch.

"They're not my cousins," I said bluntly. The two boys before me were princelings. Oh to be sure in the manner of royal families everywhere, we must have a few shared drops of blood... but that did not make us cousins. They were pretty lads with long golden curls that tickled their high lace collars. The older one, the heir who was a few years older than me, had green eyes. The younger one, less fortunate and about my own age, had only hazel.

"Your kinsmen then," Anwen said, "Prince Sigurd and Prince Leif."

I remembered them. They'd pelted me with horse dung when I was eight.

"Princess Eirwen," the older one, Sigurd, said and made to take my hand. Perhaps to drop a plummy, moist kiss on it. "The pleasure is all mine."

I tucked my hands firmly under my bottom. "I wish I could say the same."

Trust my stepmother to wrangle a courtesy out of even that. She trilled with laughter and nervously, the boys followed suit. "Oh Eira," she said fondly, "Eira, Eira, Eira. Her frankness might be daunting at first but it is her greatest charm, I do believe."

I bared my teeth in a feral smile that made the younger boy fidget uncomfortably with his kidskin gloves. "My only charm," I said. "Bowlegged and brawny, I have nothing else do I?"

For you see, my hands were never made for arranging flowers or flirting with fans. They were made to quarry salt and stone from the harsh earth. My feet were never made to take little, mincing steps on a ballroom parquet, to be slid inside satin hose and silken slippers. They were made to walk bare through miles and miles of tunnels, with baskets of rocks balanced on my head and hips. I was small and stocky and above all, _ugly_.

For you see, my mother was a dwarf.

The Stonecutters, the masters in their ivory towers prefer to call them, The Quarriers. The Children of the Hills. Very civil of them. But in the pigsty villages that are cobbled together from shit and straw, men call them dwarves. And for hundreds of years they have warred with them.

My mother was a chieftain's daughter, the beauty of her tribe. Never beautiful enough for my father, a prince who was bullied into his marriage bed by his own father. Never graceful enough, never dainty enough, never _soft_ enough. But he did his duty by her, ploughing her as regularly as a judicious farmer does his fields, getting her with child every few months. None lived more than a few days, except me - the abomination, the anomaly that made my father pinch his nose as though at a foul stench. She died when I was seven, carrying his twelfth child.

And then my father was free to follow his heart and his heart led him to the first pretty girl his eyes alighted on, outside my dying mother's bedroom door. Anwen was fourteen then, she smiled at him, offered him a cup of mead - oh how his heart must be breaking, she cooed, with the queen screaming in agony just behind them. And then, within a month, they were married.

"On the contrary, my lady," the older prince said, after a moment's consternation. I could almost see the slow, rusty gears of his mind cranking together, fumbling for something pleasant to say. "You have the most exquisite coloring."

"Yes, she has the most beautiful hair and skin you ever saw," my stepmother simpered, thrusting a tea-cake into my hand as though she hoped that if she could keep my mouth stuffed I'd forget to talk. "Really, Eira, I'm forever telling you that if you would _only_ just make an effort-"

Prince Leif looked up from his nervous assessment of his gloves. "Did you grow at all?" he asked me bluntly. "I remember you when you were eight-" he raised his hand a few feet off the ground -"and that was almost six years ago-"

"Princess Eirwen is perfect as she is," his brother said diplomatically.

"I grew," I said sullenly. I would never be the height of a proper human woman but I was taller than a dwarf, as tall as a human child. My stepmother had the shoemakers insert heels in my shoes but they made my feet ache so that I sawed them all off one night. Fifty pairs of shoes - dancing slippers, sleeping slippers, winter boots, riding boots, walking shoes, parlor shoes, fur and silk and velvet and leather. It took me the whole night but the look on Anwen's face was worth it.

"Daintiness becomes a woman," Anwen began in conciliation and I hooted. I was short but I was not _dainty_. "Yes, Eira?" my stepmother said, her face crumpling as though the weight of my presence had physically exhausted her.

"May I be excused?"

"You may-"

I never even bothered to let her finish. I didn't need her consent. I was off as fast as my stumpy little legs could carry me, my peach-and-pumpkin skirts wafting out in front of me. On cue, my ladies-in-waiting fell into line behind me like a rope of resentful ducklings. They didn't want to follow me out of the salon where there was dancing and cakes and handsome, flirtatious gentlemen and I didn't want them behind me but we were stuck with eachother. If a princess didn't look like a princess should, the next best thing was an army of servants.

We barged headlong into my father and his retinue, traveling towards the queen's salon.

"Papa," I said and fluttered into a nervous curtsy. The only one in the world who could ever make me nervous was my papa. And with good reason. "I'm sorry, I didn't see you."

"My little tempest." He sighed but there was no amused affection in his voice, no indulgence that a father might bear towards a beloved daughter. For I was not, I had never been, beloved. Normally I would be in for it - oh the eye-rolling, the grimaces, the snapping fingers, the soft voice that was never raised to his daughter but seared nevertheless - but today my father was otherwise occupied. He had his newest mistress on his arm, a girl scarcely older than I was. She had apple cheeks and breasts popping out so far from her gown, you could almost see her painted nipples.

"Eira," he only said and contented himself with a horsy sigh. "Have you met our guests?"

"Oh yes," I said. "Ask Anwen. I sat with them and we sipped tea and had little pink cakes. Oh and we told each other stories. Such lovely stories!"

"Hmph." I expected my father to breeze past but he lingered while the girl on his arm pouted and pressed her breasts into his elbow, clearly frustrated at the lack of attention directed towards her. "I hope you were civil at least. To Sigurd at least."

I raised an eyebrow. "Matchmaking, Papa?" It wouldn't be the first time. Without any sons by Anwen, I was my father's only heir.

"He's a handsome lad." Shrug. "I thought you might enjoy his company."

"So are you, Papa," I said. "Handsome." He smiled faintly and then I added, "But it didn't stop me turning out like something you'd find in the garderobe chute." That wiped his smug little smile away nicely.

"I will expect you at supper," he told me. He glanced at me and frowned. "Wear something that suits you, for heaven's sake. Anwen should see you better dressed. Your mother's rubies. Wear those." My mother had come to her marriage with three wagons of jewels and gold. My father never forgot those.

"A ruby mask would be better," I called out after him as he left. "I'm sure mother brought enough to make a mask." He pretended not to hear.


End file.
